


The Great Mistake

by Zaniida



Series: Mature Readers Only [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Additional Tags in End Note, Angst, Cognitive Dissonance, Comforting by Touch, Consent Issues, Denise's Delight, Discussing Things Like Mature Adults, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Negotiating Like Mature Adults, Unconditional Love, crying Finch, season 4 or 5, the timeline may be a little wonky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 04:14:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11866476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaniida/pseuds/Zaniida
Summary: When Harold is convinced he's done the unforgivable, will John be able to convince him otherwise?A response fic toIgnoranceby flutterbydream, delineatingconsentas opposed todesire.





	The Great Mistake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flutterbydream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flutterbydream/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Ignorance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5372492) by [flutterbydream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flutterbydream/pseuds/flutterbydream). 
  * Inspired by [Manual Override](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6290956) by [the_ragnarok](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ragnarok/pseuds/the_ragnarok). 
  * Inspired by [Bordeaux and Black Cherry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/479514) by [KaticaLocke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaticaLocke/pseuds/KaticaLocke). 



> **Content Warnings**  
>  This fic discusses various aspects of rape, and of acts that some of the characters consider to be rape. It also points to an aspect of John's past that probably counts as rape too. However, no rape happens onscreen, and the discussion of rapes that happened in the past is fairly vague with no specific description of the victims.
> 
> Also, in a shift from my usual fare, this fic contains a sexualized Rinch relationship, and a somewhat lengthy negotiation of gay sex (no onscreen sex; I don't write erotica). The negotiation, while not particularly graphic, does discuss specific sex acts, using language that I feel is what the characters would use to discuss it. I believe that, given the subject matter and the intended message ("this is how mature adults handle this kind of thing," just for starters), the negotiation is integral to the plot and the full expression of the concept conveyed, and thus fully warranted.
> 
> Similarly, this fic has more "swear words" / crude vocabulary than my usual fare. Some are used as swearing, others as the kind of term these specific characters would use to describe a specific sex act. As always, when I include a swear word or vulgarity in my writing, it is specifically tailored to that instance -- I use it because, after careful thought, I find it to be the most appropriate word to convey the concept, or the word that the character would honestly use, where no similar word would be as fitting. I never include swear words for shock value or because I was too lazy to think up better phrasing; there is a reason for each and every such word.
> 
> * * * * *
> 
> In the fic _Ignorance_ , flutterbydream posits a setup where Harold realizes that he never received appropriate consent from John, and therefore considers himself to have raped John (for like three years, nightly). The fic develops this idea at some length, and concludes with "Yeah, okay, probably, but I had my own reasons for letting you rape me and it's no big deal."
> 
> Which... I can see it. I can see setups that have characters so messed up that this concept works. Wouldn't work IRL, but that's one possible thing to explore with a rapefic.
> 
> However!
> 
> As I read through that fic, it struck me that it was confusing **consent** with **desire**. As in, it is perfectly reasonable to consent to something you don't want to do, out of a desire to please someone else. Humans do this all the time, and it's _fine_.
> 
> Whether John was _capable_ of consenting to Harold's advances is a separate issue, but I have problems with the infantilization of adult humans -- the idea that a grown man (or grown woman) who otherwise can function in society is _so_ bad off that they can't be accountable for decisions about their own sexuality (including stupid decisions). True, John and Harold have pretty extreme backgrounds, and the fandom loves to push those up to eleven, but still.
> 
> So, I started with the idea that I needed to distinguish consent from desire, and point out that John was capable of consenting. And from that basic premise, somehow I managed to write a fic of some 10,000 words. (The original is only like 4100.)
> 
>  **flutterbydream** , I hope that you enjoy this fic, and please don't think I'm being too negative toward your fic. It was an interesting idea explored in an interesting way, and I did enjoy reading it; I simply think some clarity on these issues is warranted.
> 
> * * * * *
> 
> My beta reader has been running all over America and Canada this month (thankfully avoiding wildfires), and so, although she helped me with a lot of this, she wasn't able to finish up by the time I was champing at the bit to post it. Therefore, she may get back to me with additional changes later this week, and I may alter this fic to suit. They're probably not huge changes, but there might be some areas that we condense a bit, because this fic is a _monster_. 

A line kept running through Harold’s mind as he paced, a few striking phrases from a story that his mother had read to him, so often that he could never forget the wording -- and he heard it, as always, in her voice:

_What a glorious boy he had meant to be to her! Ah, Peter! we who have made the great mistake, how differently we should all act at the second chance. But Solomon was right -- there is no second chance, not for most of us. When we reach the window it is Lock-out Time. The iron bars are up for life._

As a child, he’d thought the lesson simple and complete, a sad but fitting ending for a boy who never did the right thing until it was too late. But the haunting imagery kept bringing him back: a little boy, barely his own age, trembling outside the window as he watched everything he’d ever wanted given away to another little boy. Poor Peter had fooled around too long, thinking so much of his own pleasure and not at all of the consequences, and now the window that had always been open to him was closed and barred for good; the love that he could have had was no longer his to claim.

By the time Harold made it to college, he’d tossed the lesson aside as a fanciful, moralistic setup from a time of black-and-white thinking, of easy condemnations over minor offenses. It didn’t apply to him. Had he not just evaded a nonsense treason charge through his own quick thinking, changing his very identity to slip out of the clutches of the U.S. government? Had he not claimed for himself a spot at MIT by forging his own transcript and arranging the necessary credentials, thus proving qualified by skills alone? If iron-barred windows existed, he needed only to find the right kind of tool to get past them; there were no hard-and-fast boundaries anymore.

Decades had passed, and he hadn’t thought of the story again until a day he'd been lying in a hospital bed. The surgeries were over, the damage repaired as best as possible. It would be days before he could leave the hospital, months before he’d abandon his wheelchair. He had yet to encounter the torture of physical therapy, or deal with his own unpredictable rage as he was forced to acclimate to his new limitations. But, for a while, the meds were keeping the physical suffering at bay.

Lying there, practically immobile, he had nothing to distract him from the _real_ pain, a pain no surgeons or medications could ever touch: the crushing guilt, the agony of soul at the knowledge that it was his actions -- and his refusal to act -- that had cost the life of his dearest friend. Nathan was gone, and Harold was once again in hiding; he would never be with Grace again, and it was entirely his fault.

_There is no second chance, not for most of us. When we reach the window it is Lock-out Time. The iron bars are up for life._

Like Peter, Harold had ignored the consequences until it was too late. And there, in that bed, the memory of the words drove him to racking sobs, their reality piercing him over and over until all he could see was the bars, forever separating him from those he loved.

His child-self had been right: It was his own fault; and so it was only fitting that Harold had survived, bearing daily the guilt, the scars, the chronic pain. Nathan’s death would forever stain his hands.

And even that knowledge was more bearable than what he’d learned today.

 

Harold’s sins were never small, never simple; he never managed to realize the problem early on and deal with it then. Days of misconduct added up to weeks, to months, to years, compounded the error until the interest alone proved impossible to pay off. With Nathan, he’d ignored the Irrelevants until his friend had felt compelled to do something on his own, and that had led directly to his death.

With John, he’d done worse. And it was only today, just a few short hours ago, that his eyes had been opened to the nature of his crime. Somehow, it still came down to apathy; perhaps that would always be Harold’s sin. Not caring enough to pay attention to the details and their implications until the damage was done, the transgression accrued to his account. All because he never took the time to re-examine his base assumptions. Maybe if he’d learned the lesson the first time, it wouldn’t have come to this, but now -- now it was too late.

He’d already laid the facts out before Root, seen the horror in her eyes once she understood the things he’d done. Surely she’d relayed it to Shaw already, while they headed out to restock on medical supplies -- so now the entire team was aware. Let them judge him how they may; it couldn’t be worse than how he judged himself. Part of him wanted the whole world to know this one thing about him, the fact that he could never escape: _Harold Finch was a rapist_. And not just one time, but over and over, almost nightly, for nearly three years. And he’d been raping his dearest friend.

_What a glorious boy he had meant to be to her! How differently we should all act at the second chance. But there is no second chance, not for most of us._

It was over, but it would never be over.

_The iron bars are up for life._

 

“What’s this I hear about you raping me?”

Harold flinched. Of course John had heard their conversation; Harold had been too distraught at the time to even think of keeping it private, even as he’d realized that the sedatives probably wouldn’t be enough to keep John under. And, obviously, John needed to know; the conversation that was upon them was one that Harold would give the world to avoid, and yet he owed it to John to be honest with him. The damage had already been done; now, like with the rebar that Shaw had recently removed from John’s thigh, they had to excise the cause -- however painful it might be -- and cleanse the wound to facilitate better healing.

Nothing would ever be right again, but at least he could give John that much: a clean break.

“I put you in an impossible situation, Mr. Reese,” he managed, feeling like his throat wanted to close up on him. He couldn’t bring himself to turn around, to look John in the eye; he wondered if he would ever be able to do that again. “Back when we first met, I… I saved your life. I kept you from prison, from the CIA -- gave you a purpose, a reason not to seek death anymore. Of course you felt indebted to me; how could you not?”

“If we’re gonna be tallying up, you’re missing a couple other times you saved my life.”

“The exact tally isn’t important,” Harold stressed. “The point is that, despite my feeling that our… our p-partnership was… mutually beneficial, and put us on equal footing, I… I realize now, far too late, that it never felt that way to _you_.”

“This is news?”

Harold bowed his head, his voice coming out very small. “It… it was to me.”

“Huh. So what’s your point?”

His mouth felt dry, cottony; he swallowed, but it didn’t help much. “It’s that very power imbalance that… that made you ready to do practically anything I asked of you. No matter how-- how much you might… _not_ want to do it. As though you _owe_ it to me, for everything I’ve given you; as though by saying no, you’d be… ungrateful, or… ruin something, between us. And I knew, I _knew_ , that in your military service you’d had to use your… b-body, for missions, and--” He gulped, and tried to rush through the rest of the necessary words: “It’s unconscionable that I never thought about what that means for… for you and me, in the bedroom.”

“Harold,” John said, drawing out the name, his tone still fond. “We’ve been together almost three years. That hasn’t been a problem before; what changed?”

“Of course it’s been a problem!” Harold’s voice caught. “I-It’s just that I-- I wasn’t paying attention, I didn’t see--”

“See what?” John’s voice was pure confusion.

Shame overwhelmed Harold; he could feel the tears starting, and savagely fought them back. Crying now would make the conversation harder; it would make John feel sorry for him, and Harold didn’t merit that kind of pity. Later, once the separation was complete -- once he was alone, as he _deserved_ to be -- he’d let himself drown in the awareness of his crime; but for now, he had to stay stoic. He was good at that, and John deserved no less.

“I was so focused on making you feel good,” he said, “making _both_ of us feel good, that I never stopped to think about… what you really wanted. I just assumed--”

John laughed -- full-throated, incredulous amusement. At any other time, Harold would have treasured the sound as a rare delight, but right now it sickened him: John didn’t understand what had happened, what Harold had really done to him, and Harold was going to have to break that bubble, was going to have to _make him_ understand.

While Harold was searching for the words, John said, “You do realize how crazy that sounds?”

“I’m afraid it’s more serious than you realize, Mr. Reese.”

“Must be, if you’re calling me ‘Mr. Reese’ when we’re not even on a mission. What happened to ‘John’?”

Harold hunched over miserably, knowing that he would never again have the right to be that familiar with the man. Had forfeited that right almost as soon as he had earned it.

With gentle concern overriding his former amusement, John sighed. “Harold, help me understand: What’s so terrible?”

“I’ve brought you to bed with me almost every night for three _years_ , Mr. Reese. And in all that time, I’ve never once asked you -- never bothered to find out _your_ desires. As if they didn’t even matter! Even now, I don’t know what you really want--”

“I want _you_ , Harold. Is that so hard to figure out?”

Harold leaned heavily against the door frame, distraught. “But -- I mean -- you never wanted me to, to… _take_ you. Maybe never even wanted sex at all! I didn’t ask you, I didn’t even ask myself, I just -- I _took_.” The knot of guilt in his stomach got even tighter.

Behind him came the creak of John shifting himself on the cot. It was odd to think of John’s injured leg as a blessing, but right now Harold couldn’t bear to think of what might happen if John were able to stand. Would he stalk out of the room? Wrap his arms around Harold and try to comfort him? Harold honestly didn’t know which would be worse.

After a moment’s silence, John countered, “If I didn’t like what I was getting from you, do you really think I would have kept coming back to your bed?”

“ _Yes!_ ” Harold startled himself with how loud it came out, how self-accusatory. “That’s the _problem_ , that’s-- you might not even--”

“Seriously?”

“You wanted to please me! Wanted to… to keep me from leaving you, or throwing you out, or-- wanted to even the scales somehow… God, we both know you’re a living martyr, and this… it’s, it’s practically Stockholm Syndrome.”

“…You honestly think you raped me.”

“I _know_ I raped you. I-I didn’t realize before, but… John, you _cried_ , the first time I-- when I forced myself on you, and you hid your face from me, you _always_ hide your face from me--”

“Harold--”

“--and I thought I was being good to you, giving you pleasure, I just assumed that you liked it because you never said no to me. Maybe you thought you deserved it, or, or maybe you’ve just gotten used to it, maybe you weren’t able to recognize the harm that I was doing to you, but--”

“ _Harold_ \--”

“--but that doesn’t mean that harm wasn’t done,” Harold rushed on. “When I heard you crying, _God_ , I assumed -- I-I thought you were just overwhelmed, that it had been a long time since you’d been treated right, and I never stopped to question it. I should have realized that something was wrong, I should have asked you, but I just -- I took charge, and I pushed you to do the things I thought you’d like, trained you to just give in and let me do whatever I wanted to your body, and I never stopped to think that maybe you weren’t actually capable of asserting your own desires and limits and--”

“Harold, will you turn around and _look_ at me?”

Harold froze. It took him a long moment to muster the will to face John, and even then, he couldn’t bring himself to meet his former partner’s eyes. The tension in his shoulders as he shrunk into himself was a quiet agony -- and less than he deserved.

When a long moment passed without Harold looking up, John sighed. “Look, I’m a big boy, okay? Adult, more or less mentally sound. I can go into bars on my own and everything. You think I can’t decide for myself if I’m a victim here?”

“But--”

“Shouldn’t _I_ be the one who knows whether I was hurt at all, and how much? Shouldn’t I get to decide what the penalties might be?”

Harold scrunched his mouth and nodded soberly. “O-of course. You… I shouldn’t take away any more of your agency than I already have.”

In his peripheral vision, he made out the twitch of John’s lips, just the edges of a smile. “You have no idea,” John said, “how much I want to kiss you right now.”

Horrified, Harold backed away so fast that he ran straight into the door frame. The unexpected impact drove the air from his lungs and sent a jolt of pain lancing through his spine and out along his shoulders.

John was on his feet before either one of them could think twice -- but when he tried to take the first step, his leg wouldn’t hold, and he tumbled to the floor with a bitten-back cry.

Before Harold had even caught his breath, he was rushing to John’s side, down on his knees on the concrete -- the _crack_ as he landed barely registering.

Wincing, John chuckled ruefully. “Shaw’s not gonna be happy that I ruined her handiwork,” he murmured, voice laced with pain. “Think I tore a couple stitches there.”

“You’re bleeding,” Harold confirmed, eyes wide as he examined the bandages. “I -- I’ll call Shaw back in.”

He put one knee up, trying to get to his feet -- but the pain was suddenly too much and he had to sit down again, gasping, and straighten out his right leg.

As John gently pulled up his trouser leg to examine the knee, Harold closed his eyes. It was starting to swell; the impact of hitting the floor had clearly done some damage.

“Might be just a bruise,” John observed while rolling the cloth back down, “but it could be more serious. Either way, needs some ice.” He grabbed a small pillow from the cot and carefully positioned it under Harold’s knee. “I don’t suppose either of the girls is in hearing range.”

“They left a few minutes before you woke up,” Harold said. He looked at the desk where he’d laid his phone -- just a few feet past the doorway, and completely out of reach.

John took a deep breath. “Well, not the first time I’ve been walking wounded,” he groused, and, to Harold’s horror, leveraged himself up onto the cot -- thankfully putting no weight on his leg to do so -- and then stood up.

Ignoring Harold’s protests, John fixed his eyes on the goal and began to take short, careful hops on his good leg, trailing his wounded leg behind him as the blood started to seep through the bandage and leave drips all along the floor. Once he reached the phone, he had to lean on the desk for a while, catching his breath.

Suddenly, Harold realized how fuzzy John looked -- that far away, his features were barely discernible. Wait -- where were his glasses? Harold’s hands flew reflexively to his face, but his face was bare. He felt around on the floor but couldn’t find them; the glasses must have fallen off when he’d rushed to John’s side.

John was regarding him thoughtfully, gently tossing something in his hand, as if trying to gauge--

“Don’t you dare,” Harold said sharply. “If it breaks--”

Chuckling, John tucked the phone into his pocket and began to hop back, carefully avoiding the slippery trail he’d left on the way there. When finally he reached the cot, he fell back onto it with a heavy groan of agonized relief. He dug out the phone and flopped his hand over toward Harold, who quickly dialed Shaw.

Once Harold had explained the problem, Shaw -- who seemed torn between exasperation and amusement -- agreed that the bleeding warranted attention, even if it meant canceling their other plans. “Traffic’s bad. We’ll be there in twenty minutes. And keep pressure on it ’til I get there,” she sniped before hanging up.

Leaving the phone on the floor, Harold cautiously scooted toward John, pulling the pillow with him and wincing each time his knee changed position. John put down a couple more pillows and helped lift Harold into a more comfortable position, slightly elevated from the cold floor and with the side of the cot for back support. Only then did he stick his leg out and allow Harold to tend to it.

“You know,” he mused, as Harold put pressure on the bloodied pant leg, “I think I just hit a record for the most damage I’ve been able to achieve with just the suggestion of a kiss.”

Harold drew himself up stiffly, but he couldn’t do much more than that. Still, he leaned away from John a bit, as if the threatened kiss might happen at any moment if he weren’t on guard against it. It had been years since he’d felt the need to be wary of what John might do, but it was as if all their progress had been erased overnight.

Ripples of laughter made their way to Harold through John’s leg -- John could laugh silently, but he couldn’t still the movement. Harold shot him a worried glare, and John sighed.

“Now hold on, Finch,” John said. “I know you think I’m not taking this seriously. I’ll try, okay? I know we’re not gonna fix this with a kiss; there’s something deeper here, and I get that. We need to talk it out. Just… don’t shut down, don’t run from me, all right?”

John’s voice wasn’t exactly pleading, but Harold still took it as an entreaty. And as much as his instincts were telling him to withdraw -- emotionally, if he couldn’t physically -- he tried to accept that it was John’s choices that mattered right now, not his own. “Of course.”

“Okay.” Closing his eyes, John took in a deep breath, then released it. “When we first met, you said you knew ‘exactly everything’ about me,” he said. “No doubt you’ve got even more on me now. So tell me this: What sort of relationships have I had in my life?”

Harold could only think of the one. “Er… Jessi--”

“Not Jessica. Let’s set her aside for a minute. I’m not talking sex here, or romance, just… the people I’ve known, the ones I’ve worked with, the ones who were close to me. My partners and teammates, my handlers, the people I had to rely on. My parents, even, because I know you’ve managed to find _them_ , both sets. What would you say about them?”

Harold blinked. Tried to gather his thoughts, come up with a coherent answer. What was John getting at?

“Your adoptive parents were good to you,” he began. “But your father died while you were quite young -- inspired you to want to be a hero like he was. You… you were in the system because your biological father… abused you--” Harold choked back a sudden sob, and it took him a moment to collect himself, steel himself to continue. “You made army friends that you didn’t take back to civilian life… had commanders who did their duty and not much else. The only people who seem to have stuck with you are Kara Stanton and Mark Snow, who… who aren’t the kind of people I’d care to get involved with.”

“I wasn’t given a choice,” John said. “You don’t get to choose your handler, or your partner. The day I met Kara, I had to let go of a lot of notions I’d had about the kind of things we did, or, rather, the things we supposedly _didn’t_ do. That’s the thing about the military: You don’t get to line-item veto the experience. When I enlisted, I signed away my right to make choices, and later I signed them away all over again when I re-enlisted. Both times, I offered myself up for whatever my country needed. Blank check.”

“And they used that power over you to turn you into a monster you never wanted to be. Kept you away from Jessica when she needed you--”

“Yeah,” John said, a little too sharply. “And maybe if I could have seen the future, known ahead of time the dark roads they’d have me walking some day, I wouldn’t have been so quick to put my name down on those papers. But the thing is, _I said yes_. I didn’t know what was coming, or what it would do to me, but I surrendered myself to the care of the United States government. I willingly signed my life into their hands.”

“And they abused your trust.” Harold’s voice broke. He took a couple half-sobbing breaths, and continued, wretchedly, “I never wanted to do that to you.”

“Harold… _you never have_.”

The tears came freely now, and Harold doubled over, wrapped around John’s leg as he tried to maintain steady pressure while shaking apart at the seams. What he would give to make John’s words true, to know that he hadn’t betrayed the man he’d thought he loved -- to be a different man, a better man, a man who could have seen what he was doing and stopped himself before it was forever too late.

The weight of John’s hand on his neck was surely meant to comfort, because John seemed incapable of seeing Harold as the kind of monster that he actually was. But the tender strokes were an agony, a scorching flame, reminding Harold of what they’d had and what could have remained his, had he only been more attentive, more aware.

“Hey,” John said, his voice soft and level. “Harold. I know this isn’t the best argument, but… you think an actual rapist would be this broken up about it?”

What did John think rapists were? Did he think they were all like Benton, serial predators hunting around for new victims? Domestic abusers? Monsters who lurked in bars and dark alleys, with no conscience, no sense of remorse?

But how many were just ordinary people who had pushed past consent without thinking about it, taken what they wanted without regard for their partner’s rights? Ignored their partner’s freedom to withdraw, to cut an encounter short, to say no? How many rapists were just people who’d gotten so focused on their own pleasure that they’d been oblivious to their partner’s nonverbal resistance? It didn’t make it less of a rape.

And feeling sorry after the fact didn’t erase the harm done -- if such a thing were possible, Nathan would still be at his side.

“I hope tears aren’t bad for open wounds,” John said lightly, and Harold straightened up, realizing that John’s pant leg was wet -- though thankfully not from additional blood.

“God, I can’t do anything right,” he murmured brokenly, mind filled with the sound of John’s tears that first night. But John’s hand slipped from his neck to his shoulder, and pulled him closer, against the cot, until his head was resting on John’s upper thigh. And then John went back to stroking him, this time up and down his back.

“I used to think that about myself,” John said. “That I couldn’t do the right thing. That I’d never be _able_ to do the right thing, ever again. You changed that, you know. Pulled me out of that mindset. Showed me that I could be a good man again.”

Resting against John’s thigh, Harold sniffled as the strokes along his back slowly calmed his system. He could accept them for now, just until Shaw got back, and then… that would be the end of it. His head was starting to ache, but inside he felt hollowed out, as if his sobs had temporarily emptied him of strong emotions.

“I’ve murdered people,” John said calmly, “and tortured people, even people I knew were innocent. And you know both of those things, and you accepted me anyway. You turned my life into something worth living again. So even if -- even _if_ you had spent the last three years raping me, it wouldn’t be enough for me to turn on you. I will _always_ forgive you. I need you to believe that, Harold.”

Too numb to think, Harold just sat there -- unable to even assimilate the details, let alone believe them.

“But I also need you to understand that you are _mistaken_. That you didn’t actually do that, and that you aren’t that kind of person. That you’re reading things into the situation, because you made an assumption, and now you’re determined to think of yourself as a bad guy, and… you’re wrong. You’ve done some horrible things in your life, but this isn’t one of them.”

 _Because you made an assumption_. It was the fault that had gotten him into this. With code, he could mentally switch out and examine hypotheses as needed, but with people, he’d just pick the most likely explanation he could think of and run with it, until he was given reason to re-analyze the data. He’d understood John’s acceptance and his odd behavior in the bedroom to be one thing, and ignored other possibilities. But had he done the same thing earlier today, by assuming that his actions amounted to abuse?

“If… if that’s true, then…” His face felt hot, tears biting at the corners of his eyes again. “Why don’t you ever look at me after I… after I take you? Why do you always hide from me?”

Looking away, John stayed silent for a long moment. Then, not looking back, he asked, “Harold, prior to you, who have my sexual partners been?”

He didn’t mean Jessica. It took Harold a moment to put it together. “People you were going to kill,” he murmured, barely audible.

“Well… not all of them. Sometimes it was just to get information, or to distract them while Kara got into their stuff… a few other reasons. But yeah. Most of the occasions that I’ve given my body over to someone, I haven’t been... favorably disposed toward them, would you say?”

Harold nodded, feeling a little sick to his stomach. Was it rape if it seemed like a consensual encounter until you were looking down the barrel of a gun? _Rape by deception_ was a thing, but did that even really matter once murder was the intended outcome? At least some of their final moments had been pleasant ones… not that that made anything better.

Before he’d even approached John Reese, Harold had known about the more disturbing elements of his background. But it was unexpectedly wrenching to be confronted with the reality of the details.

“When I’m ready to kill someone… you’ve seen my face go blank, right?” John glanced back again, brows drawn together. “When it comes to covert ops, I’m good at a lot of things, but controlling my facial expression is not one of them. Kara can fake a smile, but I really can’t. Doesn’t reach my eyes. At most I can pretend that I don’t care about what’s going on. So, when you have a deficit like that, you learn techniques to get people not to pay attention to it. And it turns out that the kind of people who want to make use of my body don’t often care enough to want to see my eyes.”

“So you learned to always hide your face during sex?”

“It’s the default. But, with you… I was glad that I’d learned to do that. Because it got to be… overwhelming. A lot of things hitting me at once, right when I couldn’t control my reactions. I don’t know what I looked like at the time, but I didn’t want to show you that.”

“After all this time… you still don’t want to show me?”

“I can try to let you see. But it’s still… it can be…” He looked away again.

“You feel vulnerable?”

“Yeah. That. I don’t mind _being_ vulnerable with you, but _showing_ it… it’s harder. I will if you want me to. If you don’t mind me looking like a total wreck.”

“Why was it so overwhelming, being with me?”

A grin slid across John’s face. “Don’t turn me into a sap, here, Harold.” But just as quickly, he sobered up. “When you kissed me, that first time… I didn’t know if it was just the adrenaline, if you’d take it back the next second, withdraw… I wasn’t sure what you wanted from me. And then we were in a house you’d never let me see before, and the fridge was full and the bathroom even smelled like you… do you know how long I’d been waiting for you to let me into your life like that? I’d been sniffing around for little cracks into your privacy, and here you’d grabbed me by the arm and yanked me through the door. You made sure I got cleaned up, made me food, put me to bed… it had been years since I’d felt so cared for. Coming so soon after Rikers and Kara, it felt a bit like whiplash.”

The knowledge that John had been so affected by Harold’s care was bittersweet alongside the awareness that they could never go back to the way things had been. Or could they? How much of the facts had Harold failed to understand, either then or now? His headache was growing steadily worse as he tried to sort out conflicting information, with no way of knowing which parts of it were true.

“And that would have been enough, _more_ than enough, if you’d just saved my life and brought me in from the cold and cared for my wounds like you did, but then… then you were touching me….”

Harold shivered violently, and not from pleasure.

“And Harold, you have been my obsession from the day we met, so I wasn’t thinking whether or not I wanted to have sex with you. I was thinking that somehow, _somehow_ I’d been good enough that you wanted me, and that if I stayed good for you, then you would go on wanting me, and if you wanted my body then I was glad to give it to you.”

Raising his head, Harold looked John in the face, stricken. “You thought I wanted you because you were useful to me? John, I didn’t--”

“Well, I understand _now_ that you want me for who I _am_ , not for what I can do. But that isn’t what I thought at the time. And before you go on about power imbalance or coercion or the like, I seem to recall chanting your name a lot and begging you for more. I didn’t even expect you to be so attentive to my pleasure, that night and every night since -- and don’t think I’m not aware that you push yourself to the point of _pain_ just to ensure that I get a good ride before it’s over.” He paused. “I suppose if I’d pointed out that the penetration wasn’t doing it for me, you could have avoided some pain, so that’s my fault. But you seemed so invested in proving that you could do it, that your body was still capable... so part of the reason I didn’t speak up was that I didn’t want you to think I was disparaging your abilities in the bedroom.”

This gave Harold pause. If John had actually spoken up, the first time or the second or the third, if he’d said that he really didn’t like getting fucked… would Harold have even believed him? Especially given that his body responded to that act as easily as any other, what with Harold’s careful ministrations. Would Harold have thought that John was lying, trying to opt out of an enjoyable activity because he thought it was hurting Harold? Would he have felt insulted? Was he that inflexible?

Yes, sometimes he _was_ inflexible. He’d been happy to push his broken body to its utmost to pleasure John -- and if John had made a fuss about it, he couldn’t say for certain what his reaction might have been. But his actual reaction wasn’t as significant here as what John would have expected it to be. Would John have been afraid that he’d rescind the offer?

The data should have been simple, pointed to an obvious conclusion, but it wasn’t, and it didn’t, and Harold didn’t know how to solve it.

“So it wasn’t a one-way transaction,” John said. “I got what I wanted out of the deal. Maybe I didn’t exactly want the sex, or not the way that you were doing it, but it still felt like something I wanted to do -- something I could give you that would tie us together. So when you try to tell me that you’re a rapist… well, rape requires a victim, and I’m telling you that from that first kiss onward, you have never forced me into anything, never asked of me anything that I wouldn’t give to you willingly. And I _know_ you, Harold. If I’d ever asked you to stop doing something, you’d have stopped. You want to think of yourself as a bad person, but you’re not. You’re the most honorable man I know.”

The pressure of trying to contain it all, make sense of it all, was getting unbearable. He had thought that he’d done the unforgivable, but John was laying out a different set of facts. Was that really what had happened? Had he read it that wrong? Or was John lying, trying to make him feel better, to pretend it had never happened? Was John so stuck in needing Harold that he’d not only accept nightly rapes but lie about them, too, just to keep Harold from leaving him?

Did any of that matter, if John wanted to forgive him? But even if John could forgive him, should Harold let him do so? Wouldn’t it be more honorable to withdraw -- or would such a separation hurt John even more? Three years ago, Harold’s loss had driven John to the edge of suicide; was he strong enough, now, to be on his own? Was the separation necessary? Was it cruel?

_You’re not a bad person, Harold. You’re the most honorable man I know._

The jumble of thoughts and possibilities was too much for Harold to parse. Blindly reaching for a lifeline he was sure didn’t exist, he clutched at John’s leg, seeking anything to pull him out of the chaos. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t see myself that way anymore. Help me, John, please -- I-- I can’t--”

“I’ll help you,” John said softly, squeezing his shoulder before pulling him close again. “Just the way you helped me, when I’d lost sight of myself. I’m here for you, Harold; I’m not going anywhere. We both know I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you.”

It was hard to find the affirmations comforting when they seemed to just confirm Harold’s acute awareness of John’s chains. The man was bound to him, had been since the first day they’d met; could consent even exist in a relationship laid on such a foundation?

“Harold, when I met you, I was close to the edge -- I didn’t think there was any way to recover from what I had done. But you saw what I couldn’t see in myself anymore. I used to think you were the one who made me into a good person again, but that’s not true. You just showed me who I could be, if I tried, and who I _had_ been, without even seeing it. You gave me a path to walk, but it only worked because I was already that sort of person.”

Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, Harold tried to focus on that truth: Whatever else might have happened since their initial meeting, John had proven himself _beyond_ worthy -- because he’d been given the chance to see himself as more than a killer. “It took you a long time to believe that,” Harold murmured. “I’m glad you finally do.”

“I wasn’t always, though. You once told me that some of the greatest atrocities in the world have come from people just following orders. And I was one of those people. They’d tell me where to go and what to do, who to kill, and after a while I didn’t even question it. I was the weapon; I didn’t get to know why they were pointing me at a specific target, and I shouldn’t care. It’s only recently -- a little before you found me -- that I began to pull away from that mindset. When I faked Casey’s death. Decided not to shoot Kara. When I let the world believe I was dead.”

Harold frowned. “I’m… not entirely sure how the last one fits with the other two.”

“Those were some of the first voluntary acts I had initiated since I re-enlisted. You have no idea what it’s like to try to break free from a military mindset. Looking back, I understand that at any time, I had the ability to say no. I could have gone against orders, made different decisions -- and yes, there would have been consequences, but that wasn’t what held me back. Refusing an order was just… I never considered it an option.”

Yet another reminder of the strikingly different lives they’d lived. Harold might have briefly played the role of a diffident software engineer, but he’d never been one to blindly follow orders, let alone expect others to do the same. Throughout his life, he’d been a trailblazer, seeing alternatives, bending existing systems and technologies to do things no one expected them to be capable of. After coming to terms with being smarter than his teachers and even his own father, he’d realized that he didn’t have to respect the rules -- and he’d started finding ways around any rule, law, obstacle, or limitation set before him.

Whether it was fooling social services so they didn’t realize the extent of his father’s affliction, or exploiting vulnerabilities from his homemade computer to get internet access before it was publicly available, he’d found ways to circumvent anyone or anything that threatened to impede his progress. It was part of the reason he’d been irritated, rather than offended or threatened, by John’s efforts to pry into his affairs -- had his own treatment of boundaries not been equally audacious?

That mindset was why he’d had to develop his own iron-clad standards of ethics and self-control: No external standards held sway in his mind. He’d built his life around deciding for himself what he wanted to do and how, and he had the intellect and the talent to accomplish whatever he wanted. While attending MIT, he’d gotten outraged at the abuses he saw from people in power -- and then realized that without intrinsic limitations, he could someday become even worse than the tyrants he’d been denouncing. It had been a sobering thought -- and was the reason that he stuck so resolutely to the principles he’d reasoned out for himself all those decades ago.

Of course, the world that John had lived in had been far less forgiving of individual thought. They’d caught him early, and twisted him into the shape they wanted, and it was little short of a miracle that he’d escaped that process with some fragment of the ideals he’d had before the army got their hands on him. It was true: Harold would only ever have a superficial grasp of the ordeals John had gone through while breaking free.

“They trained you to stop thinking,” Harold said. “To do what you were told and just… accept.”

“Yeah. They pushed me up the ranks because I was good at following orders, good at picking up the skills they needed from me -- and smart enough to know when to keep my mouth shut. I learned to let the people in charge of me act as my will and my conscience, make my choices _for_ me. It’s been a long time since my consent has even been a factor.”

Straightening up, Harold pulled away from John’s soothing hand and looked him in the face. “Which makes it all the more unconscionable that I took that agency away from you again!”

“You’re not listening, Harold,” John said patiently. “My choices don’t matter. They’ve never mattered.” He put a quick finger to Harold’s lips, silencing the protest. “I know that’s not true, you don’t need to say it, but… that’s what it’s been like, my whole life. I didn’t even join the military by choice -- I mean, what choice is that for a young man, military life or prison? And yeah, I could’ve left earlier, could’ve refused some of the assignments, but the military was the one thing I was good at, and I wanted to be a hero like my dad.” He closed his eyes, as if in sudden pain, but his voice stayed clear. “So of course they made me into a villain. I didn’t choose my course -- it was chosen for me.”

Harold took deep breaths, wanting to weep for the life his friend had had before they met, but he didn’t have the energy to cry again. His head kept throbbing steadily, making it hard to focus, easier to just lean in and let John’s word-pictures wash over him.

“Now, with Jessica,” John continued, “she didn’t realize how easy it was to pressure me. Maybe I was too far gone by that point, I don’t know. I was ready to be whatever she wanted or needed of me, and yeah, she had power over me, but I never held that against her. I resigned from the military to be with her, because I knew she wanted me to. We saw the towers come down, and I signed back up, because she needed a safe world to live in, and I couldn’t keep it safe by staying at her side.

“The last time I saw her, I walked away from her so she could maybe have a better life. It didn’t feel like a decision -- more like an inevitability, something I couldn’t do in any other way -- but I could have chosen differently. She all but begged me to choose differently, and I _wanted_ to, but I got out of her way because I didn’t think she could be as happy with me as she could be with someone else. It’s one of the biggest decisions I ever made on my own, and my biggest regret.”

“You can’t tell me you regret having choice.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s easier to let someone I trust choose _for_ me. But the point is, I’m used to following orders, not negotiating for what I want. Might take me a bit to adjust to my own agency again.”

“I should have realized,” Harold said miserably. “I should have understood that part of you. All that time I put into researching you, understanding you, and I still failed you. I didn’t put two and two together--”

“Harold, stop. Yeah, okay, maybe you should have pressed the issue a bit, but hindsight’s twenty-twenty. Why would you think that a guy like me would just roll over and accept things I didn’t really want?”

“We should have _talked_ about it.”

“Yeah, maybe we should have. Either of us strike you as the type to negotiate it all out ahead of time? Did you do that with Grace? I sure didn’t with Jessica.”

“If we’d known--”

“The point is that we _didn’t_ know. Look, most people, when they get into relationships, they play it by ear. Maybe they talk about a few big things, but mostly, they fool around until they cross a boundary somewhere, and _then_ they talk about where the limits should be. Maybe that’s not smart, but it’s very human. Aren’t we free to do it that way? Accept the risk that comes when you don’t negotiate ahead of time, and just roll with the consequences once they come up? Like normal people?”

“Like normal-- John, with our backgrounds--”

“Look, you and I have enough trouble putting the important things into words. I guess it’s high time to do it now--”

“Now that the damage has been done? You can’t think it’s okay to continue--”

“Would you let me finish?”

Harold shut his mouth and turned away, but John's arm snaked around him again and drew him close.

“I _like_ what we have -- most of it,” John stressed, and then sighed. “But you’re right, there’s parts of it I didn’t actually want. I’ve never liked being the submissive partner; it’s something I _had_ to be, too many times to count, and a role that I’m used to by now. Trained into me. But the thing is, it doesn’t actually matter whether I _wanted_ it or not. I _consented_ to it. Rape isn’t the absence of desire, it’s the absence of consent: If I consented to it, it’s not rape.”

“Oh, god, I did, I forced you--”

“How are you not getting this? People consent to things they don’t want, all the time. Boring jobs. Dental exams. Family reunions. And they’re usually much less enjoyable than sex. If I had wanted to stop you, I would have stopped you; you never forced me to do anything. But I valued your pleasure over my own, each and every time. Isn’t it _my_ right to decide how much I’m willing to take? How much I’m willing to give to make you happy -- to make you feel loved and cared for, even if I don’t necessarily like it?”

“But… but I… how did I give you the impression that you had to do that? John, I… if I had known that you weren’t happy doing it, I -- I would never have -- no, it’s not your fault, I should have paid more attention to what you _weren’t_ saying--”

“Look, maybe I should have been more open about what I wanted. But you seemed to be enjoying yourself, and I was content enough. And it felt good; you _always_ make me feel good.”

“But you shouldn’t have to accept something that you don’t want out of some bizarre desire to please me!”

“Okay, let’s go with that one. Look, Harold, I know you’ve still got a head full of secrets that you’ll never be free to give me, but, aside from that, is there anything in the world that you would refuse to give me, if I asked for it?”

“Of course not, but that’s different--”

“Is it? Harold, what I want from this relationship, more than anything else, is to see you enjoy yourself. I want to give you pleasure. I’ve wanted that since before we got together, and more than ever now. I want you to be happy.”

“It -- it can’t be that simple.”

“Oh, I want other things, too. Stability, for one -- I want something I can count on to be there for me. I’ve never really had that before we got together. There’s a few other things that we should probably talk about now that the door’s open, but mostly? I want to enjoy the fact that you are enjoying yourself. And for three years now, that’s exactly what you’ve given me.”

Harold swallowed. “Is that-- is that honestly what you want?”

“More than anything. If I get pleasure at the same time, if some of my other needs get met, that’s great, that’s a bonus. But there’s only one reason I would have opted out of this relationship, and that’s if I thought that _you_ weren’t happy about it. I’ve never once had reason to think that.”

Shrinking in on himself again, Harold murmured, “I was always happy... because I thought… it seemed like we were both enjoying ourselves. I thought that I was making you happy.”

“You _were_. Always. Harold, I never expected to have anything as good as what we’ve got. And now we’ve got to talk it out a bit, change some of the details, but the details are just… they’re inconsequential. You’ve given me the most important things, and never held back anything you knew I wanted. I could have asked for more, but I was content. What we have, between you and me, is still something I want; I have never _not_ wanted this. I have never not wanted _you_.”

Finding his tears all over again, Harold turned further into John’s leg and sobbed into the fabric, able -- for the first time in agonizing hours -- to see a way forward, a future that wasn’t bleak emptiness as he moved on without the man who meant the most in the world to him.

He felt John lean forward and take him under the armpits. Getting up into the bed jostled his knee enough to make him moan, but then he was there, nestled in beside John, with John’s arm tight around his shoulders and John’s other hand threading its fingers between his own, lightly squeezing, the thumb stroking over his thumb and the palm of his hand.

“Your -- your leg,” Harold realized suddenly, and tried to pull away.

“It’ll keep,” John said calmly, pulling him back. “I’ve lost blood before, and Shaw will be here soon enough. She’ll probably be annoyed, but it’s fine, and right now, we need to do this.”

Giving in, Harold leaned into John, accepting the comfort, his shaking shoulders slowly subsiding into the soothing rhythm of their shared breaths. John was, he realized, carefully matching breaths with him, only slightly slower, encouraging his body to calm down without conscious thought. It was working.

After a while, John chuckled. “You know, that part where I said I wanted to kiss you?”

Harold raised his head. “Do you -- now?”

“Well. Maybe when you’re calm enough to be articulate about your needs and desires,” John said, mimicking Harold’s cadence a bit. “I wouldn’t want to take advantage of you.” He grinned. “But no, what I mean is, I didn’t get a chance to tell you _why_ you made me want to kiss you right then.”

Confused, Harold tried to play back that part of the conversation, but the context slipped his mind. “Why did you?”

“Because you’re standing there, trying to explain to me how you neglected to take my rights into consideration and you’re convinced you’ve done something horrible to me, and the very fact that you’re _doing_ that means you care more about my rights than practically anyone else I’ve ever interacted with. Harold, in all my life, from childhood through to now, in all the times I’ve had to do things I didn’t want to do, not _once_ has anyone besides you ever stopped to discuss how I felt about it.”

“Not even your parents?”

“Well, my dad died too young for me to remember any specific incidents. But my mom, she was great, but she was the daughter of an army brat. You follow orders, and there’s no other choice. I think that’s why I rebelled so much in my teens.”

“Which is why you got forced into the military. Almost poetic.”

“Trust you to find the poetry in crazy things like that. But yeah, so, even with two of the most loving people I’ve ever known, I had to obey without question, and hide my feelings about it. You actually care about my feelings, Harold, and respect my rights, and I have to admit I found it a little amusing to see you, of all people, standing there trying to convince me that you were a monster.”

“But…”

“Think about it. You thought you’d done something unforgivable, and the first thing you think of is making sure it never happens again, even if that means giving me up -- and then coming clean to me, making sure I understand what happened. How many people react like that? You didn’t try to hide it, or hide from it; you admitted it, confronted it, accepted the loss and tried to minimize the damage. You’re a better man than you realize sometimes.”

Long minutes ticked by as Harold tried to assimilate this information about himself, the Harold that John saw in him. As John’s firm but gentle hand kept rubbing his back, his headache slowly subsided, until finally it faded into the background hum of his usual level of pain.

“Think the girls’ll be here soon?” John asked after a while, and Harold instinctively went to check his phone for the time. It was, of course, still on the floor under the cot; he scooted over a little and lay down to reach for it, wincing at the twist to his knee and back. But his fingers brushed over something thin, and he pulled up his glasses.

Thankfully, they seemed intact. Harold Finch had worn the kind of high-end pieces that could fall a couple stories without a scratch, but as Professor Whistler, he’d had to maintain the fiction of a much lower income; in the past year, he’d replaced his glasses more times than in the fifteen years before it. He felt around a little more until he found the phone as well. As he sat up, he slid the glasses onto his face with a sigh of relief, and checked the phone -- just a few minutes left, if Shaw’s estimate of the traffic had been accurate.

He scooted back to lean into John’s warmth once more. Between that and the no-longer-blurry world around him, it felt almost as if things were back to normal somehow.

But, of course, it wasn’t quite that simple. “Where do we go from here?” Harold asked, not willing to guess at how much had changed between them. Whatever John decided, he would accept it.

“Well,” John said, still patiently rubbing his back, “I’d like to lay off the penetration for a while.”

“Of course,” Harold agreed, without hesitation. Then he swallowed. “Do you… do you want to fuck _me_ , for a change? I’ve never--”

“Not right away.”

“No?”

“Harold, if we get around to that, I want it without this cloud hanging over it. When I fuck you, I want it to be because we’re exploring new ways to bring each other pleasure -- not because you feel that it’s something you _owe_ me. And if we never do it at all, that’s okay with me too.”

Torn between relief and a curious sense of disappointment, Harold lowered his eyes. “I just… I want it to be fair, between us. Equal. Balanced.”

“I don’t think it has to be equal for it to be fair. I know you feel like you were taking advantage of me, but it never felt like that to me. Not once. We could go right back to what we’ve been doing, and I wouldn’t have a single problem with it.”

“You deserve more than that. More than just… whatever pleasure I can think of without input from you. I want to treat you right, John. It has to be more than just _adequate_.”

“Well, for the moment, what say we switch off months? You get to top for one month, I get to top for the next.”

“Gladly! But you should get a few months first, to offset--”

“Not a chance.”

“What?” Harold squirmed to change position, to look John in the eyes, suddenly worried at the firmness in his tone. “Why not?”

“Harold, if we go into this thinking that I’m somehow at a deficit, if we try to make up for the past three years, you’re never going to see us as equals. We’re starting this over, right here, right now. I’ll take the first month, but there’s no catching up, no red ledgers -- it’s a clean slate.” At Harold’s doubtful look, he added, “I will not accept this any other way.”

 _Shouldn’t I be the one to decide the penalties?_ It was John’s choice to make, not his. Nodding, Harold leaned in tighter as John’s hand began lightly massaging his tense shoulders.

“Actually,” John said thoughtfully, “before we get that far… maybe we could clear the air a little by laying off sex entirely for a couple weeks. It might help us get our heads on straight again.”

“You… don’t want to be intimate, for a while?”

“The thing is, every time we’ve toyed with sensual stuff before -- wax play, bondage, massage -- it’s always been foreplay. Let’s make it the focus. We can enjoy each other’s bodies in a different way, and be intimate without the sex.”

A fond memory crossed Harold’s mind: writing poetry across John’s back in watercolors. At the time, Harold had noticed that John’s relaxation was different, but he hadn’t known what the difference was. Now he was sure: John had _enjoyed_ getting painted on. And afterwards, after Harold had read the poem for him, he’d kissed Harold’s knuckles one by one, then stretched out across the bed and sighed as he relaxed into the fluffy comforter, waiting for the words to dry.

“I could take you to some more extreme places,” John added. “We haven’t even tried suspension yet. Or maybe some stuff in the pool -- take the weight off your spine for a bit.”

Harold sighed. “That _would_ be nice.”

“Maybe we spend a few nights just enjoying each other’s company. Catch a movie together, or listen to music. Sit next to each other and read. No pressure, just… companionship.”

“I… I would like that.”

“Then, when it’s time to take this back to the bedroom, we’ll have a good clean start. It won’t feel like it’s expected or required; we won’t have to worry if the other one really wants it. Because I guarantee you, a couple weeks of jerking myself off in private again, and I won’t be able to keep my hands off of you.”

A grin quirked across Harold’s lips. “And then a full month of you showing me the kind of things you really want from me.”

“And that. I’m already looking forward to it.”

“And when it’s my turn again, I’ll know how to make sure it’s good for both of us.”

“You won’t have any problem there,” John said, raising Harold’s hand to kiss across the knuckles. A delightful shiver ran through Harold’s frame.

“But I won’t fuck you again unless you ask me for it.”

“Right.” John paused in his kisses. “Well, tell you what,” he said, adding another kiss. “I’ll let you fuck me on your birthday.”

This surprised an amused huff out of Harold. “A birthday present, huh?” he said, just as the sound of the girls’ voices started to echo down the entrance to the subway.

“Yeah. You can do whatever you like with me,” John said in a low register that went straight to Harold’s groin -- and then he leaned in close to mouth the shell of his ear. “On your birthday. You know, as soon as you tell me _when that really is_.”

Harold shot him a look of mock outrage and shoved away from him, and they were both still laughing when the girls came into the room.

 

_Ah, Peter! we who have made the great mistake, how differently we should all act at the second chance. But there is no second chance, not for most of us._

But for Harold -- for this one mistake that nearly cost them everything -- there was indeed a second chance. The bars were down, the window flung wide, and there, warm and welcoming, the love he had almost lost for good. And if Peter Pan, in innocence, had meant to be a glorious boy for his mother, how much more did Harold, far beyond innocence, intend to be everything that John could ever need or want from him. Whatever mistakes they would make in the future, they would make them together -- as true partners, in every sense of the word.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Additional Warnings:**  
>  Blood (dripping all over the floor). Mention of child abuse (no details), of using sex as a weapon (John's military past is highly questionable). Also it gets real angsty about irrevocable consequences.
> 
> The discussion deals with, among other things: power imbalance, agency, free will, the responsibilities that come with having free will, and the "victim mindset" that is a little too ready to conclude a person _must_ be a victim, regardless of how the supposed "victim" feels about it.
> 
> Harold used to be oblivious to some of the nonverbal signals John was conveying, but partly that was because John honestly didn't want him to know. John is described as having cried after sex, but the meaning of this is given different interpretations by different characters. They also discuss how Harold's injuries affect the way he has sex, and how John was concerned about offending him if he implied that Harold couldn't or shouldn't do things a certain way (even though John wasn't actually trying to imply that).
> 
> * * * * *
> 
> **tl;dr:** Rape isn't the absence of _desire_ , it's the absence of _consent_. **If I consented to it, it's not rape** \-- even if I really didn't want to do it in the first place.
> 
> Note that certain factors can get in the way of meaningful consent. For example, if the person is in power over you (your boss, or a policeman) and you feel that saying no will bring serious consequences (getting fired or demoted, having them lie about your activities, etc.), then meaningful consent is impossible. Or if you know that your partner gets emotionally abusive if you refuse their whims. Or if you're drunk or drugged or sleeping, and not in a relationship where drunk/drugged/sleeping sex has been negotiated ahead of time (it _is_ possible to negotiate these out ahead of time). Things like that.
> 
> But, in general, human beings can consent to things they don't want to do -- and it's _fine_. Free will!
> 
>  **Corollary:** _Desire_ doesn't equal _consent_ , either. Human beings are not animals; we have the right and the freedom to say no to our own desires.
> 
> Consider Bob and Alice, both highly attracted to each other. There may be any number of reasons that Bob decides not to come on to Alice, or that Alice decides not to admit that she's interested in Bob. I know the "Sex Pollen" fic is here to get past this "problem" of two people who have the hots for each other not gettin' it on, but c'mon. Would you like to be magically forced to have sex with every person you ever found attractive? (Even the jerks?)
> 
> Even if Alice gets wet panties at the thought of Bob, or Bob gets an erection at the thought of Alice, it doesn't mean that either one _consents_ to having sex with the other one. It just means that their bodies and/or their brains are trying to convince them to breed babies. Each of them has the right to say "You know what? I'm not going to try to have sex with that person. For a variety of Reasons that are my own personal private business."
> 
>  **Also:** “Think about it. You thought you’d done something unforgivable, and the first thing you think of is making sure it never happens again, even if that means giving me up -- and then coming clean to me, making sure I understand what happened. How many people react like that? You didn’t try to hide it, or hide from it; you admitted it, confronted it, accepted the loss and tried to minimize the damage. You’re a better man than you realize sometimes.”
> 
> Mature adults accept blame when they're at fault, do what they can to fix the situation, and don't try to weasel out of the consequences.
> 
> Example: http://www.leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=341


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